Hinduja family feud puts their century-old business empire in jeopardy

 With dozens of companies, the closely held Hinduja Group employs more than 150,000 people in 38 countries.

As a child in London, one of Karam Hinduja’s favorite pastimes was watching Bollywood movies with his grandfather Srichand Hinduja, the patriarch of a sprawling global business empire.
“He and I, without fail, once a week, whatever was new, whether it was good or bad,” Karam said in a recent interview in Geneva. “That’s a lot of how we bonded.”

Little did he know then that a quarter-century later the two of them would be embroiled in a real-life family drama more gripping than any Bollywood plot. And unlike most of the tearjerkers they watched, this one may not have a happy ending.

His grandfather, SP as the 85-year-old is known, now suffers from a form of dementia, and Karam, his sister, mother, aunt, and grandmother are locked in a battle with the rest of the Hinduja family over pieces of the $18 billion British-Indian group. Karam’s side of the family is effectively asking for what was once unthinkable — the group’s assets to be broken up. SP’s three brothers, Gopichand, Prakash, and Ashok want the group to stick to its age-old motto that “everything belongs to everyone and nothing belongs to anyone.”

As clashes pile up in courts in London and Switzerland and the SP side suggests misogyny may be driving actions against his daughters, there may be no going back. The increasingly bitter feud has raised the possibility of a messy unraveling of the 107-year-old group, putting at risk one of the world’s largest conglomerates. With dozens of companies — including six publicly traded entities in India — the closely held Hinduja Group employs more than 150,000 people in 38 countries in truck-making, banking, chemicals, power, media and healthcare.